When was the last time you tested your crisis procedures?

If anyone knows about money that’s Warren Buffett, whose quote “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it” is now famous. Yet, it seems that preparing for a crisis is still considered by many companies – large or small – as a “nice to have” compared to say a Marketing or Operations training. While working in silos is still a strangely accepted corporate behaviour, having a regular cross-departmental crisis training, including Management, is rarely viewed as a priority. Unless you get hit by a crisis of course and it is already too late. The costs of not-doing are high: WV lost 18 billion USD, Samsung’s loss is estimated at 10 billion USD and Chipotle reported its first-ever loss earlier this year. Today it is BASF who is facing a major crisis with unfortunately human casualties. For smaller size organisations – SMEs or sports Federations – it is even worse as the cost of failure can mean going out of business or becoming irrelevant. So who is next? And are you prepared?

PS: for a thorough analysis on how Chipotle (mis)managed its food safety crisis, check out this Fast Company article.